Tag Archives: events

Climate Week NYC Focuses on “A Race We Can Win”

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Climate Week NYC begins on Monday. This annual event is taking place alongside the UN Climate Action Summit, the theme of which is “A Race We Can Win. A Race We Must Win.”

Organized by The Climate Group, the week-long event brings together leaders from a variety of sectors, including government, business, and non-profit organizations, to discuss solutions to climate change. Their overall goal is to accelerate climate action and limit global warming to 1.5°C.

Public events to raise awareness and support of the summit’s mission are scheduled all around the city. They range in style from panel discussions and seminars to concerts and exhibitions. One early event taking place this Saturday is the “Our Future Festival”, which has been organized by the NYC Chapter of the Climate Reality Project.  For the full program of events, go to the Climate Week website.

Credit: The Climate Group

This Year’s “Climate Week NYC” Will Focus on Accelerating Climate Action

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Climate Week NYC begins on Monday. This annual global summit takes place alongside the UN General Assembly and brings together leaders from a variety of sectors, including government, business, and non-profit organizations, to discuss solutions to climate change.

Organized by The Climate Group since 2009, the goal of the conference is to keep this pressing issue high on the global agenda. This year, which marks the halfway point between the passage of the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015 and the 2020 target for countries to ratchet up their greenhouse gas cutting commitments, the event will focus on ways to accelerate climate action. The ultimate goal of the non-binding Paris Accord is to limit global warming to 2°C (3.6°F) above pre-industrial levels

Public events to raise awareness and support of the summit’s mission are scheduled all week around the city, from September 24-30. They range in style from panel discussions and seminars to concerts and exhibitions. For the full program of events, go to the Climate Week website.

Storm King Art Center Exhibition Focuses on Climate Change

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Art and science have come together to expand the public conversation on climate change  at Storm King Art Center in Orange County, NY. In an exhibition called Indicators: Artists on Climate Change, the work of seventeen artists and collectives address the diverse impacts of this critical issue.

Curated by Nora Lawrence, the exhibit is a mix of large-scale sculptures and installations spread out across the open air museum’s five-hundred acres as well as smaller pieces displayed in an indoor gallery.

Credit: Mary Mattingly/Storm King

Notable among the various projects is Mary Mattingly’s installation, Along the Lines of Displacement: A Tropical Food Forest. This stand of palm trees imported from Florida offers visitors a glimpse of what the landscape of upstate New York might look by the end of the century when the average temperature is expected to increase by 7.2°F (4°C) if global warming continues unabated.

Credit: Justin Brice Guarigila/Storm King

Another piece that stands out in Storm King’s bucolic setting is Justin Brice Guarigila’s We Are the Asteroid.  The orange colored, solar-powered LED highway message sign – the sort usually seen flashing information about dangerous situations – displays three-line ecological aphorisms by philosopher Timothy Morton. These include the piece’s moniker as well as things like “Danger: Anthropocentrism” and “Warning: Hurricane Human”.

Credit: Hara Woltz/Storm King

Embracing the science of climate change is Hara Woltz’s “Vital Signs”. In this interactive piece, a working weather station is encircled  by nine cylinders (a reference to the shape of ice-core tubes) that present the idea of albedo and melting sea ice. The top of each cylinder gets darker as a viewer moves around the circle. More specifically, the lighter area decreases by 13% per cylinder reflecting the predicted decrease in Arctic sea ice per decade relative to the 1981-2010 average. The cylinders also progressively get taller, referencing sea level rise. Data from the weather station is displayed in real time on Storm King’s website.

Other exhibiting artists include David Brooks, Dear Climate, Mark Dion, Ellie Ga, Allison Janae Hamilton, Jenny Kendler, Maya Lin, Alan Michelson, Mike Nelson, Steve Rowell, Gabriela Salazar, Rebecca Smith, Tavares Strachan, and Meg Webster.

The exhibit is on view through November 11, 2018.

Speaking Event: The Art and Science of Climate Change

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Climate change is a complex scientific subject with a plethora of data-rich reports that detail its causation and diverse impacts. However, as important as all that information is, not everyone responds to facts and figures or charts and graphs. That is why art, which taps into human emotion and tells visual stories, can help create new pathways to understanding this critical issue that affects us all.

On Saturday, April 7, I will be giving a presentation titled, The Art and Science of Climate Change, at the Ann Street Gallery in Newburgh, NY. Blending my two passions, it introduces the basic science of climate change and explores how artists from around the globe are reacting to its various impacts and possible solutions.

Currently on view in the gallery is Anthropocene, a group exhibition in which I am showing pieces from my Under Glass series. Curated by Virginia Walsh, the show has been well covered in the press, including a blog post on Climate You and a nine page feature in Issues in Science and Technology, a magazine published by The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

If you are in the area, please stop in and say hello. The program begins at 2PM and it is also the final day of the exhibition. The Ann Street Gallery is located at 104 Ann Street, Newburgh, NY.

“Memory: 41 years” is on view in the Anthropocene exhibit. Credit: Melissa Fleming

Speaking Event: The Art and Science of Climate Change

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Climate change is a complex scientific subject with a plethora of data-rich reports that detail its causation and diverse impacts. But, not everyone responds to facts and figures or charts and graphs. That is why art can help broaden the public conversation and help create new pathways to understanding this critical issue.

On Friday, April 15th, I will be giving a presentation that I developed called The Art and Science of Climate Change at New York University (NYU). Blending my two passions, it introduces the basic science of climate change and explores how artists from around the globe are reacting to its various impacts and possible solutions.

Please contact me to arrange a presentation for your school or organization.